Autonomous vehicles can sense a surrounding environment (e.g., obstacles, roadway, etc.) and navigate autonomously through the surrounding environment without human input or at least partially without human input. That is, autonomous vehicles can operate according to different levels of autonomy. For example, an autonomous vehicle can operate according to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Level 2 classification for autonomous driving. In this autonomous operating mode, an autonomous vehicle relies, at least in part, on handovers from autonomous operation to manual control by a vehicle operator when the vehicle cannot or should not autonomously operate due to various circumstances. A handover can be initiated by the vehicle or through the intervention of an operator.
Currently, it is difficult to engineer, as a consumer product, an autonomous driving system that can perform satisfactorily under a wide variety of different conditions. Despite manufacturers' efforts to train an autonomous vehicle to successfully handle a variety of common driving situations, the number of unique situations and boundary conditions is significant. Consequently, handovers still occur more frequently than some end users might prefer.